


Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

by theladyscribe



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, M/M, Pittsburgh Penguins, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 17:50:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe
Summary: Yegor Gennadyevich has an assignment for him. Zhenya knows what it is before he even speaks.





	Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> This is another story that has been on my mind for... more than two years now. The Sid/Geno Angst Fest finally got me to actually finish it. Many thanks to the people who encouraged this story from the start and to sevenfists for the recent encouragement and beta work.
> 
> Title is from the Wallace Stevens poem.

I  
Among twenty snowy mountains,  
The only moving thing  
Was the eye of the blackbird.

Yegor Gennadyevich has an assignment for him. Zhenya knows what it is before he even speaks.

The two of them sit on a bench near the river, Gennadyevich idly throwing bread for a growing huddle of birds. Zhenya sits beside him, drinking coffee and eyeing the birds warily. He knows that geese have a reputation, but he has never trusted starlings, with their iridescent feathers and too-knowing eyes.

There's no emotion, no sympathy, in Gennadyevich's voice when he says, "You kill him or we kill you." He may look like a grandfather, but Gennadyevich has never been anything more than a handler to Zhenya.

Zhenya is silent for a beat longer than he should be. "Let me do it my own way."

Gennadyevich stares at him without actually looking at him. "Very well," he says at last. "You have a week."

Zhenya nods and stands and walks away as casually as he can, heart racing, half expecting a bullet in the back of his head, half expecting to find Sidney already dead when he gets home.

He is surprised to find Sidney alive and well. That night, they make love and Sidney asks, "What's gotten into you?" with a soft and happy smile.

"Just missed you today," Zhenya says.

"I'll miss you so much when you're gone," he doesn't say.

*

II  
I was of three minds,  
Like a tree  
In which there are three blackbirds.

At the end of the week, Zhenya takes them to the lookout above the lake in North Park. It's a late summer evening, the sun just beginning to set, the breeze warm.

"This is nice," Sidney says, looking out at the water.

"Yes," answers Zhenya, staring at the curve of Sidney's jaw. "I'm get camera, take picture."

He presses a kiss to Sidney's cheek, letting himself linger for just a moment. Zhenya pops the trunk and pulls out the handgun and its silencer. He tries to ignore the way his hands shake as he checks the bullets. He keeps one eye on Sidney, but he doesn't turn around, for which Zhenya is thankful.

The sun is halfway below the horizon as Zhenya closes the trunk and begins to walk back toward Sidney. He half-expects him to turn then, to want to draw Zhenya back into his embrace so they can watch the last moments of the sunset wrapped around each other. Sidney doesn't, perhaps assuming Zhenya will come up behind him, wrap his arms around him, and hold him close.

The silencer dulls the sound of the shots but not the sound of Sid's gasp as he pitches forward and falls to the ground.

Zhenya lets the gun fall from his grip, and he comes to kneel by the body. He checks Sidney’s pulse, but he has always been an exemplary shot. It is quick work to roll him off the edge of the lookout into the water and to kick the gravel around to help conceal the blood.

He disassembles the gun and throws that into the water, too.

When he has finished, Zhenya gets in the car and doesn't look back.

*

III  
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.  
It was a small part of the pantomime.

Zhenya calls Gennadyevich from his car. "It's done." He gives his report as succinctly and dispassionately as he can muster.

"Good. Your flight leaves at ten o'clock. Don't be late."

Zhenya tosses the phone out the window as he drives across an overpass. He'll abandon his car somewhere in South Side, take a taxi downtown, and then catch another taxi to the airport. Zhenya goes over the exit plan in his head repeatedly, reciting the steps in his mind so he has no room to think about anything else, like the way Sidney hunched his shoulders against the breeze on the cliff or the way the light hit his hair or the dumb joke he told Zhenya on the drive to the lake that he learned from his Boy Scouts.

By the time he gets to the airport, Zhenya is barely holding it together, the weight of his choices finally starting to crush him. Luckily, he's also memorized the plan, so he moves through security on autopilot.

Not even the flight attendant seems to notice the prick of tears in his eyes.

*

IV  
A man and a woman  
Are one.  
A man and a woman and a blackbird  
Are one.

They send him to Washington DC first, to work in the embassy there and establish himself as a rising star in the Russian diplomatic corps. He has a title that sounds important — aide to the under-secretary of something-or-other — but in practice, he is still a spy. He simply no longer has to do the dirty work himself.

It's a relief, he thinks. Or it would be if he didn't see Sidney's ghost everywhere.

*

V  
I do not know which to prefer,  
The beauty of inflections  
Or the beauty of innuendoes,  
The blackbird whistling  
Or just after.

He has nightmares.

Sidney, on the edge of the cliff, turns toward Zhenya only to catch a bullet in his eye. Sidney, on the edge of the cliff, has a gun in his hand pointed at Zhenya. Sidney, on the edge of the cliff, laughs when Zhenya tells him that he's a spy.

Sidney, on the edge of the cliff, stares out at the sunset, ignorant of the bullet Zhenya is about to put in his brain.

*

VI  
Icicles filled the long window  
With barbaric glass.  
The shadow of the blackbird  
Crossed it, to and fro.  
The mood  
Traced in the shadow  
An indecipherable cause.

Zhenya takes Sidney to the lookout above the lake. It’s a nice summer evening, and the sun is just beginning to set. Zhenya kisses Sidney because he can, and runs his hands all over Sidney’s body because he needs to check for wires before he says what he needs to say.

When Sidney is pliant and Zhenya is satisfied that he isn’t broadcasting their conversation, Zhenya pulls away. Sidney chases after him, trying to tease more kisses, but Zhenya puts a hand on his shoulder. “I need tell you something, Sid,” he says.

*

VII  
O thin men of Haddam,  
Why do you imagine golden birds?  
Do you not see how the blackbird  
Walks around the feet  
Of the women about you?

Zhenya takes Sidney to the lookout above the lake. When he closes the trunk, Sidney is looking at him, hands spread wide.

"You don't have to do this," Sidney says, stepping toward him. "Let me bring you in. We'll cut you a deal. I'll make sure it's a good one."

Zhenya shakes his head; he knows there’s no way he can do that. He aims, he shoots, and Sidney falls back, tipping over the cliff.

*

VIII  
I know noble accents  
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;  
But I know, too,  
That the blackbird is involved  
In what I know.

He hates Washington.

He startles every time he sees a man with broad shoulders and dark hair. His compatriots gossip about it, he knows, tittering about Evgeni Vladimirovich who jumps at shadows. Zhenya swallows back his anger and ignores the knife-like pain of guilt and sadness and heartbreak that settles in his gut.

*

IX  
When the blackbird flew out of sight,  
It marked the edge  
Of one of many circles.

They send him to Canada. It's a demotion, Zhenya thinks, but Ottawa is less claustrophobic than DC, the air crisper, the winters more like home. He likes it.

They make him the secretary to the Counsellor of the Science and Education Division at the embassy, a desk job suitable for a former spy. He's been told he could make Counsellor himself one day, perhaps even an ambassador if he wants. Zhenya doesn't know what he wants.

(A lie. He wants what he can't have, a man long-dead and the life the two of them might have had together.)

*

X  
At the sight of blackbirds  
Flying in a green light,  
Even the bawds of euphony  
Would cry out sharply. 

Winter in Ottawa is harsh, but Zhenya doesn't mind the cold anymore. It reminds him of home. It reminds him of Sidney. It's a sharp kind of cold when the wind blows between the high-rises, pain like knives as it stings his skin. Zhenya takes it as punishment for his sins. 

Zhenya has been in Ottawa for only three months the first time he thinks he sees Sidney there.

Zhenya steps out of Shawarma King and sees a man bundled in Sidney's winter coat turn the corner onto Augusta. It startles him so badly, he stands gaping in the doorway of the shop until someone says, "Shut the door, eh?"

He shakes himself and heads back to work. Sidney is dead, and even if he weren't, he couldn't have kept that coat.

Zhenya pushes the incident from his mind, but a few weeks later, he thinks he sees Sidney again. He's driving across the canal, and if he didn't know better, he'd swear he saw Sidney skating on the still-frozen water. He doesn't look long enough to be certain, but that night, he dreams about Sidney.

In the morning, his boss looks at him and says, "You look like shit. Are you sick?" Zhenya shrugs, waving off her concern.

He doesn't push it from his mind this time, though. Instead, he takes the memory out when he gets home that evening and inspects it, lets it morph into something more tangible. He can imagine what he might do if it _were_ Sidney on the ice, if the two of them were together now. They would skate along the Rideau, spinning circles around the families and couples, laughing until they're breathless.

And when they're weary from skating, they'd go home, still laughing. Zhenya would make dinner while Sidney set the table and whined about how hungry he is. After dinner—after dinner, Sid would put on a movie, and Zhenya would spend the first hour of it pressing closer and closer until Sidney finally lets himself be distracted. Zhenya would brush his hand under Sid's shirt, kiss the side of his throat, wait patiently for him to reciprocate. They'd make out until Zhenya has Sidney pressed into the couch, the two of them rutting against each other, still dressed. He can imagine—Sidney would finally, _finally_ , put his hand in Zhenya's pants, drag fingers over his cock and his balls, teasing. With that, Zhenya would have enough, pulling away and then dragging Sidney with him back to the bedroom where he could take him properly apart.

Zhenya idly tugs at his cock thinking about it, but then he remembers the sound of the gunshot and the way Sidney barely made a noise as he fell to the ground. Zhenya rubs a hand across his eyes and is surprised to find it come away wet from his tears.

*

XI  
He rode over Connecticut  
In a glass coach.  
Once, a fear pierced him,  
In that he mistook  
The shadow of his equipage  
For blackbirds.

Zhenya dreams of Sidney again that night. Sidney is in the kitchen of Zhenya's house in Pittsburgh, singing loudly and off-key. It's a lullaby, Zhenya thinks, something he heard once about a blackbird pie.

Zhenya walks into the room, snakes an arm around Sidney's waist, and buries his face in Sidney's hair.

It is the first pleasant dream Zhenya has had in years.

*

XII  
The river is moving.  
The blackbird must be flying.

**Author's Note:**

> Count the [stanzas](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12687132).


End file.
